Flood of criticism over Korean college entrance policy

"Seoul National University (SNU), which is difficult to enter even for those accepted to Harvard or MIT, must be the best university in the world."

Seoul National University`s refusal last Friday to offer early admission to a student who had achieved a perfect score on the scholastic aptitude test (SAT) unleashed a flood of criticism of the Korean education system and college entrance policy.

The criticism built greater momentum with the acceptance to both Harvard and MIT of second-year Seoul Science High School student Lee Kyu-Young (17), who was also denied early entry to SNU.

Making matter worses was the acceptance to Oxford University in England of Kim Sun (18), who attends Korean Minjok Leadership Academy (KMLA). Her father, Hong Soo-Hyung (47) stated, "The fact that

she would have failed if she had applied to SNU clearly reveals the flaws in the Korean system."

According to many experts, Lee Kyu-Young, who numbered in the top 25 among her 130 peers, failed to be accepted for early admission as a medicine major due to her less than sparkling overall grade point average.

For early acceptance to SNU, the admission board considers the SAT (80%) and overall grade point average (20%). For the grade point average (GPA) assessment, students` scores in five subjects, including Korean, English, and math, are considered, and all applicants are ranked in ten tiers.

Although Lee received a perfect score on the SAT, her high school GPA would have put her at a disadvantage to a student who had 4.0 GPA at a regular high school with a high SAT score. Critics say Korean universities lack the ability to distinguish "true achievers" through consideration of variety of aspects of their school life.

According to the 1999 International Science Citation Index (SCI), which grades universities worldwide through the number of research articles published, Harvard took first place with 8,492 articles, followed by Tokyo University, and UCLA. SNU finished 73rd with 1,924 articles published.

In his book, "A Conversation with the 21st Century," Song Doo-Yuel, a professor at Munster University in Germany, wrote, "SNU really places around 800th among universities worldwide. Research by the professors at SNU is only about 0.56% of that from Harvard, 5.0% of Tokyo University, and 7.9% and 13.6% in comparison to Hong Kong University and Singapore University."

Kwan Joon-Mo, a professor at Kyunghee University, said, "The case of Miss Lee is one which clearly reveals the flaws in the Korean college entrance system, which fails to adequately recognize truly over-achieving students."

Kim Sung-In, admissions officer at Korea University, said, "The SAT has become a sort of test measuring who makes the least amount of mistakes. Universities should be able to make self-guided selections of students."

A law professor at the SNU said, "In the U.S., the universities make their selections of top students through a process which considers the GPA, recommendations, essays, extracurricular achievements, special talents and such. If the Ministry of Education stubbornly adheres to hard numbers, it will only prove detrimental to each individual student, as well as to the competitive edge of Korea and the Korean economy, not to mention the universities themselves."

Dong-A Ilbo cartoonist Kent Kim, a graduate of Harvard University, said, "In case of Lee Kyu-Young, when Harvard asked her whether her high school had a basketball team, she answered that she was in fact the person who started the basketball team at the school. That is the kind of person Harvard looks for."

Kim went on to say, "A recommendation by a Harvard graduate also plays a major role in the admission process. I can`t understand the recent opposition by students who have been dropped by SNU due to poor grades."